So I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I wasn’t sure I was going to because 1. I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to a large project this semester; and 2. I wanted to start working on a new novel idea, but that idea was far from ready to be worked on during NaNo (I didn’t even have character names yet, much less any sort of character profiles at all, or a lot of information on the world [as it’d be fantasy], plot, etc.).

But then one of my friends from school convinced me to, and I’m so glad she did, because these past few days have been awesome. I've been writing a lot more than I have in a long time and it feels great to just be writing again. Even if I cringe every few minutes at what I just wrote, it's great to be making progress.

I just passed eleven thousand words, which is basically half of my total word count last year (yeah, only got a little over 22k last year, unfortunately). Which makes me really excited—only the third day, and already I’m half of where I finished last year, so I’m actually really hopeful to “win” this year and get the full 50k. Both Friday and Saturday I was able to get 5k words each day (I’m really lucky NaNo started on my day off—Friday—and I didn’t have much going on Saturday), which is definitely more than I have ever written before. I’m not sure I’ve even ever written 5k words in a single day, but I definitely haven't done 5k two days in a row.

And better yet, I've just been really excited about writing again. Yeah, getting all 5k was hard, especially the last couple hundred words, but even so this has really just made me excited and happy to be writing again. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and I can't wait to keep going.

So we’ll see, but I’m feeling really good about this year, and even if I don’t finish I hope to make a significant dent in my novel—if not actually finally finish it. I’m continuing the one I started last year, since I haven’t worked on it much since. Of course, even if I do finish it, it will need a lot of revisions, but still. I’ve had this idea lying around for over four years now, so it’ll be good just finally get it completed so I can move on to more projects. It will need much, much (much x1000) revising, but . . . still, the hardest part (for me, at least) is just writing that much on a single project.

That always seems to be my problem, really. I often start a project but never end up finishing it because I either lose interest or gain more interest in another project. Even if this novel isn’t my favorite story idea any more, at least I’ll have actually finished a novel.

How's everyone else doing so far? I hope NaNo is going well for those that are participating—whether you’re doing everything by the book, being a “rebel” (hey, they have an official forum on the NaNo forums specifically for “rebels” and technically I fall into that category since I'm continuing my novel from last year), or doing your own thing instead of NaNo but using NaNo as the backbone—the important thing is just writing.

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As for Halloween stories, The Ambage recently released a small collection of Halloween-themed stories: Crooked Ways

(image links to larger size)

(amazing artwork by 55555)

The paperback version is less than four bucks, and you can get a free Kindle version if you buy the paperback from Amazon. It includes stories from myself, Nuile, GSR, Zox, Zarayna, and 55555.

Otherwise, life is going pretty well, just been busy with school and stuff but trying to be more active here. Notable things that've happened since Summerish (though none of this was lost in the data loss, since I just wasn't very active and never updated my blog =P):

Re-fell in love with Firefly (about a month ago I had a Firefly/Serenity marathon [after purchasing the Collector's Edition of Serenity], followed by a commentary/bonus features marathon, going back and watching the episode commentaries, film commentary, and various bonus features. Yeah, I kinda love this show/movie).

Watched the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer a couple weeks ago and also fell in love (I'm restraining myself from watching any more until after NaNo).

Had an Avengers marathon (watching it and all the films leading up to it) back in late August before classes started after completing my DVD collection of the Avenger films. Fell more in love than I already was with them. Will be writing an entry that ranks them from best to worst (in my opinion, obviously) soon (hint: Avengers is #1).

In general just fell in love with Joss Whedon's work.

Started work on a collaborative writing project (four intertwined novellas) with some friends from school; super excited about that.

Best book I've read since summer: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman.

Started re-reading some of The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher, which are amazing books and re-fell in love with them, too.

Pre-ordered the paperback of A Dance with Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, which came this past Tuesday; I'm really excited to read it come Christmas-ish over winter break.

Watched the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad as the episodes aired. Man, "Felina" and "Ozymandias" were such amazing episodes. That show in general is just pretty incredible.

I've been thinking about some things related to my past actions for a while now, and it feels like the time is right to address them, so I'm going to do that here.

Put simply: in the past, I have involved myself in discussions that ended in unresolved conflicts. I said things in those discussions that I truly regret to this day, and I know that people were hurt by those things. I don't want there to be conflict between myself and other members, and as a staff member I realize that my behavior in those discussions was not appropriate. That being said, I would like to offer an apology:

I'm sorry. For anything I've done or said that was hurtful. My earnest desire is for resolution and reconciliation on these issues. It was never my intention to be hurtful toward anyone, and I sincerely apologize.

In the interests of prudence, I'll be locking this entry. If you do have a response, however, by all means send me a PM. Thanks for reading.

So 2012 was an amazing year. Most probably the best year I’ve had yet. I’ve made some mistakes, I’ve done some stupid things, I haven’t done quite as much writing or reading as I would’ve liked, and there’s been a few other small downtimes, but overall it was amazing. So, let’s break down the categories (I considered separating them like Nuile did, but I figured why not just put them all in one entry…maybe that was a mistake =P):

Writing ~ I’ve made amazing progress with my writing this year. Previously it was rare that I write – a short story, maybe two, a year and otherwise that’s about it. This year that has grown exponentially. Starting in around June, John (55555), Micah (Kakaru), and I, along with many others, started doing nightly “Write-Offs” where we’d write about a theme for 15 minutes and then comment on each other’s works. While we took a long break (like, 5 or 6 months =P), recently John and I have started doing them nightly again, and it’s amazing. They’re not my best writing, but just writing almost every night is something that I truly love and am thankful for.

Perhaps my biggest writing achievement this year was 30,000 words for NaNoWriMo (I meant to write an entry on that, but I guess I forgot…). No, I didn’t quite make it to the 50k, but considering how little I had been writing in previous years, and how this is the first year I’ve written (while also juggling the first semester of college), and how I’ve never written a single story longer than 1.5k, this has been a huge step for me. Writing this much in one month about one single story is just awesome. I’m still surprised I was able to do this much, and I look forward to getting the full 50k next year.

What I wrote was an espionage and psychological thriller. My old, 2010 short story “Hope” is actually the prologue for it. I definitely had a lot of fun writing and planning this, and I hope to finish it soon, as I’m only about half-way done with it. I’ll probably write another entry sometime just about this and other writing, but since I’m covering a lot in this entry I should probably leave it at that.

I’ve also written four poems this year – the first poems I have written since freshman year of high school. While they were for my creative writing class, I’m still fairly pleased with them and look forward to writing more poetry next semester, as I’ll be taken a poetry class (same professor, too, so that’s cool – I really liked him). Additionally, I’ve written several short stories in 2012, two of which are over 2,000 words – longer than any short story I’ve written before 2012 – as well as several over 1,000 words. These are both big steps for me as, again, I really hadn’t been writing much and it was hard for me to write long stories. Now this year I’ve written several. I may do another blog entry some time specifically about my character Detective Calvin Duster and the stories I have planned for him and the stories I have written.

But all in all, it’s been a great year writing-wise. I still haven’t written as much as I would have liked, but that’s what 2013 is for, and I’ve written more this year than I have in all other years combined, so for that, I am happy.

In total, let’s see. I’ve written roughly…7? short stories, half of a novel, parts of two different Serials, 4 poems, and over 50 flash fiction pieces. 2011? I didn’t write a single short story, apparently. I must have written something, but nothing that I thought was good enough to post online. Wow, that’s bad.

Reading ~ I’ve written several blog entries on books in 2012, so I don’t think I need to do that again. I’ll just link to my Best Books of 2012 and leave it at that. This is the second year that I’ve read more than a-book-a-week, and I’ve read many great books. I hope to continue my book-a-week streak for 2013 as well.

Blogging ~ So this year I started blogging for the first time (off of BZP), mostly for my write-offs. It’s been a great experience and I’ve met some awesome people. I just plan on blogging even more this year.

Movies ~ Wow, so 2012 has been a great year for movies. I’ve watched more movies in theatre this year than quite possibly my whole life combined, haha – I don’t go to the theatre often. The Hunger Games was enjoyable, and it’s been fun ranting about it and the book to various people. Seeing the Avengers at BricksCascade with the awesome people there was really fun. Then of course The Dark Knight Rises over summer was completely amazing and one of my favorite movies. I saw The Bourne Legacy with a friend, and enjoyed that. I really like Jeremy Renner, and it wasn’t a bad sequel to the Bourne Trilogy. The last two movies I saw were The Hobbit and Les Miserables, both of which were completely amazing. I hope to write a review of and ramble for both, but for now I’ll just leave it at saying they were amazing.

TV Shows ~ I’ve discovered several new TV shows this year. Namely, Castle, The Walking Dead, and Justified. All are amazing shows, and Castle is definitely one of my top 5 all-time favorite shows and is amazing, and Katie and Aimee are awesome for nagging me enough to finally start watching it.

Music ~ I’ve found a variety of new music this year. Most importantly, ThePianoGuys. These guys are amazing, and definitely my favorite band/music group. Many thanks to Will (Tolkien) for introducing them to me. Then Katie (Ezorov) has shown me some awesome bands as well, name Eisley, the Hunger Games soundtrack, and Adele’s Skyfall song, among other things. I’ve started listening to more of the Beatles and finally got their #1 Hits CD, and I’ve also started listening to Billy Joel, thanks to Grant-Sud. And lastly, I’ve started listening to soundtracks a lot more this year – Hans Zimmer, Howard Shore, etc., as well as other classical stuff like Handel’s Messiagh, etc. Really amazing stuff. I have of course listened to other things new-to-me this year, be these are all some of my favorite groups and songs, now.

Personal Life ~ With the help of the people mentioned below and other things in my life, I think I’ve definitely grown as a person this year, specifically in my Faith and beliefs. I can’t really get into the detail, but suffice to say I am extremely thankful for these people and the circumstances that allowed me to become, in my opinion, a better person. I still have a lot of work to do, and unfortunately I have also failed throughout the year many, and I’m not happy with many things that I have done, but I believe that I have gotten stronger and I hope to this year accomplish some personal, private goals that I was not able to accomplish last year, though I did make progress on them in 2012.

People ~ I’ve had some amazing relationships with people this past year. I’ve grown close to many, many people that I hadn’t been previously close with or as close with.

First and foremost, while we started talking since BrickCon 2011, Katie (Ezorov) and I didn’t really get super close until 2012. She is one of the most amazing people ever, and the best of friends one can have. Talking to her for literally hours a day is just really, really amazing, and she is a super awesome person. I just can’t put into words accurately how amazing she is and how amazing it is being so close to her.

Then there’s John (55555), who I’ve been friends with practically since I joined this site. But it seems like this year we became particularly close. Alike in so many ways, and just easy to talk to, he’s been an amazing friend this year and we’ve told each other practically everything. It’s been fun talking about our various struggles and wishes and people that we like, giving advice to each other and whatnot. He’s always there for me and is like a brother.

Micah (Kakaru), too, I feel like I’ve gotten a lot closer to this year, probably because I’ve gone to two conventions with him and talked to him a lot on Skype. Micah, as I’m sure is obvious, is an awesome guy (just ask Rob), always willing to talk and help out with things. I’ve also gotten closer to Jason (xccj), rooming with him at two different conventions and going on mini road trips to Seattle – it’s been really fun, and I love how it doesn’t matter if we disagree on politics or religion, we put those aside and just be friends while respecting each other. And everyone, at BCon and BCascade, I’ve had awesome times with and gotten closer to.

I think perhaps the biggest jumps I’ve made this year with people (previously rarely ever talking to them, and now talking to them very often and being good friends) would be Caleb (Cederak), Will (Tolkien), and Nate (GSR). I’ve always respected them a lot as writers (Nate less so, but that’s only because he wasn’t even active until like earlier this year, so I had no idea who he was until he entered those short story contests and then he immediately gained my respect =P). Caleb, especially, I’ve gotten really close to, and he’s helped me out a lot with things. Again I love how I can have practically completely opposite viewpoints on politics and religion with both Caleb and Nate, and we’re still great friends, because we don’t let that get in the way. Aimee (Aderia), too, I didn’t really know until this year, and now we’re great friends (and she’s also my Les Mis buddy that I can yell at about awesome Les Mis things any time I want. We’re also Les Mis t-shirt buddies!). And same with Kraggh – we’ve got a lot in common and we can both appreciate Les Mis for the awesomeness that it is.

Although I went to school with her for 4 years, I didn’t really meet my friend Christina until early 2012. She really helped me become a better person and realize that there are other people out there like me (besides John [55555] =P), and since then I’ve grown so much in my Faith. Katie, too, has helped me immensely with my relationship with God, and she’s another person reminding me that there are people who share my views and beliefs. I’ve become a much better person this year, in terms of my beliefs, I think, mostly due to John, Katie, and Christina, and for that I will be forever grateful.

And I could seriously ramble on and on and on about all the amazing relationships I’ve had this year, and keep listing more and more people, but I’ll end with just mentioning the members of the Ambage Skype chats. Especially Nuile, who never gave up his writers club idea, and I’m so glad we were able to create the Ambage and how successful it’s been. Literally everyone there is amazing and are awesome friends, and I couldn’t be more grateful for how they have been so influential on my life.

And, well, that’s about it. I know I’ve probably rambled more than people care, but this was a fun entry to write. Here’s to 2013! *raises glass*

New poem: Life of a Father. Wrote this last Monday for my Creative Writing class after holding my cousin's new baby two days before. Comments are much appreciated. =]

And check out the new Fortnightly Flash Fiction Contest! If you enjoyed the flash fiction marathon, that's what this is, just not quite so rapid-fire. Stories are due by October 8th, 11:59 PM EST. Also check out the Ambage if you like writing -- we have made several changes and added new features.

Oh man am I so excited. Last Sunday I bought tickets to see The Dark Knight Rises opening day in IMAX. Which is going to be amazing. Today I bought tickets to go see Les Miserables which is being performed at a theatre near my house (seeing it this Sunday)...I really, really wanted to see the play again before the movie comes out, so I'm very glad I'll be able to. This will be the second time I've seen it done professionally (I also saw it twice performed at a high school) in person (as I also have a video of the 10th Anniversary Edition which is awesome).

Aaaand that really doesn't sound like I'm excited that much, but that's because it's 5 AM and I haven't gone to bed yet. =P But seriously, I'm so excited! Les Miserables and The Dark Knight Rises are both going to be amazing. Less than a month away for TDKR!

Last thing before I go to bed (I tell you, John/55555 is really having an influence on me...he hardly ever goes to bed before 4 AM and I think that's rubbing off on me as the past week I haven't gone to bed before 4 haha), the ECC Contest has now been posted, and remember: only a short time left to vote in the Flash Fiction Marathon Final COT Polls!

Okay, time to go to bed. Even though I'm not tired so I'll probably end up staying up another half hour at least anyway...

Do you like epics and want to give back by giving people reviews? Ever thought of joining the ECC? Well now's your chance. Coming June 22nd, a contest will be hosted in the Epics Critics Club (staff approved); the winner will be given an internship at the ECC. Keep your eyes on the ECC topic this Friday for further information and the opportunity to put the power of the pen in your hands.